April 13, 2011

Deserving Winner

It has been really hectic all these days. There were so many things I wanted to write about, but just could not get the time. I wanted to write about a conversation I had with Kundan Shah a few weeks ago. I can summarize that as: “Do not cater to the audience. But respect them.” I wanted to write about Sudhir Mishra’s ‘Dharavi’ – that I managed to catch on big screen, and which is definitely one of the better Hindi films you will see. And I wanted to write about the best birthday gift I have received in a long time – a 9-movie collection, all Satyajit Ray films.

But yesterday was such an important day that I forced myself to find time and write these words. As mentioned in a previous post, I had been mentoring the making of a 3D film, a non-fiction visual poem on the town of Vrindavan. Yesterday was the award ceremony. Our film stood 3rd and won the Best Editing award. (The only other awards were Best Cinematography and Best Film). The winning team is going to have a trip to Hollywood and I was a little disappointed. But in the end, I think they were the deserving winners – ‘Goli Aatam’ – a Tamil film about a little girl who challenges a bunch of boys in a game of marbles.

But there is more news. The organizers have selected one film to be sent to Panasonic Japan. And that is ours. More than anything, we are proud of the movie we made, and are glad to be part of an experience we will never forget. Some of the readers of this blog contributed in the making. I must thank them for everything they did.

After the award function, I went to watch ‘The King’s Speech’. And despite my awareness about the movie’s subject, it moved me deeply. I was amazed by ‘Black Swan’ and dazzled by ‘Inception’. And I really appreciated ‘The Social Network’ and ‘True Grit’. But ‘The King’s Speech’ in my opinion really deserved the Best Picture Oscar. Cerebral entertainment is great, and a difficult thing to achieve. But being able to appeal to the heart is even more difficult. And more often than not, they do it by keeping things simple. Two winners – ‘The King’s Speech’ at the Oscars, and ‘Goli Aatam’ at Panasonic Dimensions, just reinforced that.

Here are the links for you to have a glimpse at the competition, and what we did there:

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P.S. I started the 'Must Watch' recommendations in September 2010. Before that I had watched several movies that must feature in this list. But in order to save myself from the useless and predictable exercise of recommending all great movies, I decided to follow a simple eligibility criterion: The movies recommended here would be among those I watched or re-watched since September 2010. So please do not be surprised if 'Cinema Paradiso' or 'Apocalypse Now' (which are, in my opinion, definite Must Watch) do not feature in here. They will find a place in the list the day I re-watch them.